


chart a course

by PreludeInZ



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Cartography, Friendship, Gen, Gift Fic, Sparker, TIAS Scout being non-horrible, There Is A Season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 06:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>via <a href="http://theoldaeroplane.com/post/105934439229/chart-a-course">Pemm's tumblr</a>:</p><blockquote>
  <p>PreludeInZ wrote this thing about Scout and we got to talking and we decided that probably it was actually TIAS Scout she was writing about, accidentally (aka I liked her ideas and stole them and put them on TIAS Scout), SO HEY LOOK IT’S 4000 WORDS OF TIAS SCOUT DOING SOMETHING NOT HORRIBLE. THANKS PRELUDE</p>
  <p>This is canon to TIAS, and takes place shortly before the events of Sparkler’s third act! (and again i did not write this!!!! its preludes fault. dang)</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	chart a course

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sparkler](https://archiveofourown.org/works/529396) by [Pemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm). 



> I really must demand that you read [There is a Season.](http://archiveofourown.org/series/60682):

Sniper drew the short straw, because somehow he always did. And he damned his rotten luck and their stupid team meeting. He’d had less to contribute even than Demoman, who had gotten up and left halfway through in a fit of irritation that he was slurring too much to be understood. He’d nearly left with the map, too.

That had been the subject of the meeting, gathered around the map. It was sort of a secret meeting, but it was only secret from the Scout, and he wasn’t hard to keep secrets from. And they’d  _told_ him there was a team meeting, but they’d told him it was at the opposite end of the base. The kid had his faults, the way he ran his mouth, just generally talked too much. Didn’t pay attention or listen, got distracted and wandered off. In spite of all this, he at least was always punctual.

It was generally agreed that it wasn’t his fault. It was a hard job. He was very young and still raw at the edges from newness and inexperience. He prickled and bristled and completely failed to understand that the rest of the mercs needed maps that were  _legible_ , and directions that weren’t given in the span of single run on sentence that fit in the space of a single breath.

Admittedly he had a good set of lungs and could run like hell and climb and dodge and jump. He was a passable shot and getting better, and it didn’t matter because he was fearless if you let him bring a baseball bat on the field. And he was an okay kid, just young and dumb and overconfident. He was funny, even, if you didn’t let him run away with chatter. It wasn’t like he was  _useless_. It was just he had a role and a function, and they needed him to fill it.

So, someone had to talk to him. In a democracy, this would have been a carefully considered choice, something to be voted upon, and Engie would have gotten the job, on account of being smart and passably sensitive and soft-spoken. But Engineer didn’t want to do it, no one did. So. The fistful of fuses in Demo’s hand, and Sniper’s rotten damn luck.

Well, of course Scout was the place where the rest of them weren’t, hunched over a table in the dining room, spinning a pen across the backs of his knuckles, twining it through his fingers until it blurred. More than spinning it, making it into some sort of alive thing, the impossibly complex geometry of a single line. Sniper watched for longer than he meant to, before he remembered to clear his throat. “Neat trick.”

The pen snapped upright, and then was pinned to the table beneath one of Scout’s hands, stilled with a sharp impact, like he’d killed it. He shot a sullen glare across the room. “Ain’t a trick.” And then, with heavy sarcasm, “An’ thanks awfully, showin’ up to the damn meeting. Sorry, I ain’t taken any notes for you. Gonna have to ask someone else. Oh  _wait_ …”

This was off to a markedly poor start. Sniper coughed, awkward. “Well, it might be we made a mistake, in the way things got handled. Sensitive topic, and all. But probably you understand…”

Still glaring, angrier now. “Yeah, ‘cuz I ain’t stupid. Right, an’ that makes it  _lots_ better. You guys don’t even have the guts t’talk to me to my face, instead I gotta sit here and try an’ imagine what anyone’d wanna say. Somethin’ a buncha hired killers are too chicken t’say’s gotta be real bad, I figure. God. I am gonna lose my friggin’ job, an’ it’s on account'a you all are  _morons_.”

“Not like your attitude is much help,” Sniper pointed out, then regretted saying it.

Scout bristled again. “Yeah, that’s the problem. My freakin’ attitude. Look, you gotta point you wanna make, or d’you just wanna tell me to pack up my shit an’ go? Or’ve I got a date with that pretty girl from the office, the one what kills people an’ always has dirt under her nails?” He dropped his eyes. “She’s the one hired me, figure it’s only fair. I woulda quit by now, if I weren’t pretty sure that’d make it  _her_ job t’ friggin’  _murder_ me.”

“Miss Pauling isn’t gonna murder you. No one’s gettin’ fired.”

Well, those were the facts, but they didn’t seem to help. Scout just slouched further down over the table, huffed moodily and buried his face between his folded arms. “Maybe your contract said somethin’ different than mine did, then.”

Sniper had not actually bothered to read his contract. “Might be,” was all he could say, honestly. He decided to change tactics. He hadn’t actually formulated any tactics, on account of he was terrible at this sort of thing, but he crossed to the fridge, grabbed a pair of beers. And he admitted to himself, as he put one down on the table and popped the lid off his own, that he hadn’t actually read the room before he’d entered.

So, to reevaluate: Scout, sat alone at a table in the dining room, toying with a pen. Not sullen, but dejected. Not fooled by what had been, upon reflection, an insultingly transparent ruse by the rest of the team. Moody and certain he was about to lose his job. Looking suspiciously at the beer Sniper had placed beside him before he sat down across the table. “T’your health,” he offered, tipping the bottle towards the younger man, before taking a swig.

“…what, you screwin’ with me?”

“It’s just a beer.”

Still with the suspicion. “I ain’t twenty-one yet. Not ‘til next month, May. You don’t need t’get me in trouble, I don’t need any’a  _your_ help doin’ that.”

Oh. Sniper wasn’t sure why that would matter, Scout seemed like the sort of kid who would have gotten his hands on whatever the law prohibited, purely on the grounds that the law prohibited it. “Well, you shot a man in the face yesterday. Not sure I see the grounds for the moral quandary.”

Scout glared at him again. “Yeah, an’ then I got flagged with a citation just for tryin’ to have a conversation the other side’s Scout, find out who his team is. No freakin’ point, even, that moron’s all about hockey, so ain’t even like we’d have anything to talk about. So the rules ain’t real clear ‘round here, know’m sayin’?”

Sniper did not, in fact. Crossfaction relationships had never interested him, he was barely even interested in his colleagues. “Ah. Yeah, they’re particular about not doing that, I s’pose. Well. I don’t think anyone would really mind. You  _did_  shoot a man in the face yesterday. Figure that’s probably all the defense you’d need.”

“Whatever.” But he picked up the bottle and expertly knocked the cap off against the edge of the table. Downed half of it and glared at Sniper, daring him to make a comment.

Well.

Sniper wasn’t uncomfortable in silent spaces, he was perfectly content to have a drink and marinate in his own deliberate and careful thoughts. And if Scout was bothered by the silence, he was irritated and stubborn enough not to do anything about it. Only one of them had an objective or any kind of stake in the conversation though.

“About the maps…” Sniper started carefully, and then took a sip of beer to try and gain the time to figure out what to say next.

“Ain’t my fault you morons can’t read maps.”

“Scout, there’s nobody expects the job to have come easy to you straight off the bat. But it’s been a few months, and you’ve got a good handle on all the other…the other aspects of it.” The murdering people and the constant dying and the pain and the anguish and the pointlessness of it all. And the ridiculous salary. And the fact that you had to be just a little bit cracked to do this job well. “No shame in it, if you need advice in how to manage the trickier parts.”

Both bottles were empty now, not that it had helped at all. Not that Sniper could tell, anyway. “Oh, yeah, great, that’s real great. That’s real helpful. Condescendin’ as all hell, jeez. Yeah, that’s the part’a the job that I can’t do, reason I was friggin’ hired. No. Ain’t none of you listen to me, ain’t none of you can read maps, an’ I am frustrated as hell ‘cuz this job is  _damn hard_  an’ I’m still bustin’ my ass tryin’ t’do it, but  _no one pays attention to me_.”

“Well…”

“You ain’t,” Scout snapped. Maybe just a little bit rawer, a little bit less restrained. Not even twenty-one, bloody hell. “What the hell was your point comin’ in here, anyway, whatcha wanna talk to me about? You sure ain’t listenin’, ‘cuz ain’t nobody ever does.”

Sniper paused. He hadn’t known what he was going to say, but out of the people who they could’ve sent, he at least was good at listening. That had been all he’d done, all the way through the damn meeting, listened to the lot of them all talking over each other. There were a lot of valid points being made. And he’d heard from the rest of the team. Maybe it was time to get the opinion at the crux of the matter. “…Fair point. Sorry ‘bout that. Listenin’. It’s hard to get a word in edgewise, workin’ as we do with this crew of lunatics.”

Scout narrowed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Can read a map, though.”

That made him laugh, but it was a mean sort of laugh. “Oh, yeah, I betcha think you can, too. You an’ all the rest of ‘em…crap. Don’t know the first friggin’ thing about maps, any of you.  _Here_. Hey, yeah, you know what, here.” Scout pulled a napkin out of the dispenser on the table. Sniper noted, bemusedly, that this was probably the first time he’d seen any of his teammates do so. The napkin and the pen Scout had been playing with earlier, shoved across the table. “You do it. You think I’m so terrible at it, let’s see what kinda map  _you_  can draw.”

“Now, I didn’t say…”

“Draw a friggin’ map, Stretch, then we’ll work out what you can an’ can’t say t’me.”

Sniper spent his life with a bird’s eye view of the world. Of course he could draw a map. “What of?”

Scout’s eyes were amused now, just the barest flash of his usual cocky attitude. “Don’t need me tellin’ you, what the hell. Whatever ya want. It ain’t hard. I oughta be able to tell just lookin’ at it, right? Crap, man. Ain’t that the point of maps?”

Fair point. Again.

It was tricky to do with someone watching, even if it was only Scout. Scout was intent, though, watching the pen move, with none of his usual animation. He didn’t even look especially critical—not that Sniper felt he needed any criticism. He’d taken his time, he always did. He was patient. He drew a pretty decent map. He looked it over, he was pleased. He signed it, even. He put the pen down and pushed the napkin back across the table. “It’s Sawmill,” he offered, keeping his tone neutral. No big deal. Nothing to crow about.

“Yeah, I can see that. Question, though. How many buildings d’you think you forgot to draw? Because it’s four. An’ like half the bridges. An’ not a single damn entrance. An’ you ain’t marked out the path behind the waterfall. Also, you figure the span of the whole place fits in a distance of about five hundred feet? ‘Cuz that’s the only scale seems to make sense with how big you’ve made the shit you did remember.”

“Just a rough idea.”

Scout scoffed. “Oh, yeah, ‘cuz that’s all you guys ever ask me for. A rough idea. You bastards already  _have_ a rough idea. That ain’t my goddamn job.”

Sniper blinked at him. He thought for a few moments, then got up and grabbed another couple beers. Plunked them down without comment. He’d brought the map with him, the latest one, from the not-quite-a-team meeting. He unfolded it, spread it out. It was a mess. It was hastily roughed in lines of various weights and patterns. Scribbled, tiny handwriting covered it, and weird incomprehensible notation. There were arrows everywhere. “Well, I dunno what this is meant to be, but I’m fairly sure it’s not your job either.”

“That is ‘cuz it is like six different maps at once, and ain’t none of you  _listened_  when I tried to explain about it.”

“You talk too fast.”

“I got too fuckin’ much I gotta say!” He reached across the table, pulled the map closer. “Gimme that. Jeez. Just because you don’t know how to read a thing don’t mean it don’t say nothin’, cripes.” Scout shot Sniper another moody stare. “Do I hafta explain?”

Sniper nodded. “Yeah. I think you do. Slow it down, maybe. Because  _that_ doesn’t look like any map I’ve ever seen.”

Scout muttered bad temperedly, stared moodily at the map in front of him. Picked his pen up, tapped it on the table for a long minute. Then made a frustrated noise. “…this is a wreck. This is a goddamn mess, an’ a’ _course_ it ain’t useful to anyone, ‘cuz I had to get it done in twenty damn minutes. Friggin’ Christ. Ain’t fair. I am the best I know at my goddamn job, an’ I can’t get anything done in twenty friggin’ minutes.”

“Thought you were supposed to be fast, mate,” Sniper joked, trying to lighten the mood.

It did not work. Just dark, irritated silence and the thud of another bottle cap, popping off against the edge of the table.

“…Well, so draw it again? Try mebbe to make it a proper map, this time.”

Scout laughed, hollowly. “Ain’t no point. ‘Cuz you think it ain’t a proper map, just on account’a you can’t read it. Hell. You all’re supposed to be big damn professionals, I know I ain’t in the same league. Aw, I dunno what the hell I’m even doin’. I was gettin’ looked over by a minor league ball team back home, caught some dumbass manager’s attention. I coulda done  _that_. But no, instead I’m tryin’ t’do this damn dumb mercenary job, an’ I ain’t cut out for it.”

“Oh, well. You got the killin’ part down pat, an’ most people figure that’s the tougher thing.” Sniper paused, looked down at the napkin, with his crude rendering of Sawmill. Scout had been right. He’d missed a lot. “Here. You draw it. Sawmill. Maybe I might learn something.”

Scout narrowed his eyes, and then sighed and nursed the second beer for a quiet, pensive minute. Gradually he seemed to loosen up, let a little of the anger go, once he’d decided Sniper was being sincere. “Yeah. Maybe. God. Gimme a minute.”

He hooked the strap of his bag around his ankle and slid it out from beneath the table, where he could grab hold of it. Sniper watched as he rifled through the contents, pulled out a battered metal case, a handful of ragged notebooks, different colours, and a bundle of pencils and pens, held together with an aging rubber band. A small penknife to sharpen them with. Then a larger pad of graph paper.

The first thing he drew was a compass rose, simple and clear. Then he opened the little metal case and pulled out a ruler, drew a small scale beneath it. And then he looked up. “Who’m I supposed to be makin’ this for?”

Sniper blinked. “I’m right here. Look, if it’s too much trouble…”

“No, that ain’t it. A map for you ain’t the same as a map for Engie, or for Soldier, or for Demo.”

“A map’s a map.”

“You are a  _moron_ ,” Scout grumbled. “Watch.”

And then he got started in earnest. And Sniper watched.

It wasn’t immediately apparent, but he had started from a loosely defined perimeter and worked his way in. He referred back to the scale repeatedly, he referenced several of the notebooks, flipping through dog-eared pages. Sniper caught a glance at one. It was covered throughout in weird symbols, interspersed with numbers, and small, precise sketches. Sniper had always assumed Scout’s handwriting was just illegible. Looking at it now, he had a revelation.

“…you don’t write in English?”

“What, ‘course I do, s’just a real basic cipher. I lose these damn things all over the place, can’t have ‘em bein’ easy to read by just any old bastard. I got one of my older brothers used to be in the army, he did all kinds of this kinda shit, with codes and radios an’ all'a that. Taught it to the rest of us, used to play at bein’ spies. Wrote all kinds of notes, drove the teachers at school up the wall.”

Sniper picked one of the little books up, flipped through it. It was full, page after page. “…what’s it all say?”

“S’just notes. About everything, important shit. I dunno, distances, sometimes. Where stuff is, when it was there, if it’s got moved since the last time I saw it. I can read it, you don’t need to. Gimme that one, I need it.”

Sniper obliged, holding out the little notepad. Scout had finished roughing in the basics of the layout of Sawmill, and he had to admit, it put his own napkin drawing to shame. He’d drawn it quickly, copying what Sniper now realized were basic floor plans, laying out the rooms carefully and precisely. The kid had to have a memory on him that was practically photographic.

Now he retrieved a blue and a red pen, and started doubling back over all the buildings he’d outlined, adding a second layer of detail, little brackets of colour within the shapes of the walls.

“…what’s that now?”

“If it’s blue it’s a way in an’ a way out, like a door. If it’s red, s’only a way out, like a window. Ain’t quite that simple, ‘cuz I never run into a window weren’t also a door if it was  _necessary_ , but it’ll do. Single line means it’s on the ground floor, double line means it’s on the second floor, so on ‘n so forth, an’ if I draw it runnin’ the long way, means it’s a below ground level, crosses under a wall, ‘stead of through it.”

Scout started sketching again, adding wide angles out from the windows, crosshatching and adding patterns of lines where they weren’t interfered with by the other buildings.

“…those’re my…hell. Hold on a damn minute. Those’re sight lines out the windows?”

Scout was grinning now. “I ain’t done yet.”

“Wait, that big map. The one we…from earlier. Ain’t any colour on that, why didn’t you ever colour code any of the big maps?”

“Heavy’s colourblind. Soldier too, I think, but he ain’t admitted it. Bet it gets him real down, though, what with the flag ‘n all.”

He had drawn the map itself in the center of the page. Around the outside he started adding sketches. The views within the spaces he’d drawn and shaded, Sniper suddenly realized, as basic shapes started adding up into buildings. “…how…hell. How come you haven’t ever told me about this before? How come you haven’t told anyone?”

“I  _have_. No one  _listens_.”

“Well, t’be fair, you  _do_  blather a lot. This… God damn. I had no idea.”

“Yeah, an’ you still don’t. Places where the lines’re darker? S’cover. Can’t shoot through ‘em. Anywhere I ain’t filled in, anywhere that’s hollow? Shit like plywood, or s’got breaks in it, like it’s just boarded up. Could shoot through it, probably, if you wanted.”

“How d’you know…?”

Scout shrugged, polished off the last of his second beer. “I pulled enough shrapnel outta my ass ‘cuz I been wrong about what is and what ain’t bulletproof. I learned.”

Sniper took the map, probably not even half-completed, and looked it over. “Hell. This is damn impressive. Why’s that other map not look a thing like this one?”

An irritated laugh, and Sniper was realizing that Scout had plenty to be irritated about. “Ain’t you listened? Because it’s tryin’ to be like six maps at once, an’ you all need different things outta maps. Engie needs to know where the ground’s level, where he’s got decent cover, an’ I can’t figure out if he knows how t’read elevation when I put it down. S’all…whatcha call it…contour lines. An’ I can make ‘em, that ain’t hard, but he just looks an’ nods, an’ I  _know_ he is a smart bastard, but he ain’t ever done what he oughta accordin’ to what I tell him. Ain’t ever put things where I think they should go, but hey, fuck me, right? What do I know? Soldier wants to know about how the other team moves, wants me makin’ notes ‘bout troop movements, wants me puttin’ down where I think we gotta go. That’s why there’s ‘bout a billion arrows all over the damn thing, ‘cuz I dunno the hell from tactics at _all_. He ain’t ever taught me.  _Demo_ I can’t even understand half the time, between the accent an’ the fact he’s always drunk offa his ass. So I dunno what  _he_ wants, an’ I can’t tell if he’s yellin’ at me about what I give him.”

Sniper gnawed his lower lip, still staring at the map in his hands. This was not the way the talk had been supposed to go, and he was on the back foot. And apparently two beers was enough to make Scout ranty again, not that he hadn’t been a bit, to begin with.

Scout had slumped back down against the tabletop, with his chin resting on his arms, toying with his pencil moodily. His cheeks were a bit flushed, his eyes just a touch glassier than they had been when Sniper had entered. Not even twenty-one. Hell. Bloody hell.

“…Well.”

“Yeah, ‘well’. Well,  _what_? I get fired, it ain’t on account’a I can’t do my goddamn job. Gonna be on account’a ain’t none of you ever even  _tried_ t’make my job any easier.”

Sniper wasn’t a man who had a lot of remorse, not for much of anything. Feelings about much of anything were something of a liability, in this line of work. Still, he managed to do a decent approximation of feeling bad about this particular oversight. Especially because there could’ve been a lot of use gotten out of Scout, a lot sooner. “You aren’t gonna get fired. I think we oughta have another team meeting. I think I’ll make damn sure you get listened to, this time around. An’ for what it’s worth, I’m sorry haven’t listened to you before, mate. This is bloody good work, and I am not an easy man t’impress.”

That got a slight grin. “Yeah, ain’t any of you are. I am pretty much the best you all got, ‘cuz I am younger an’ faster an’ plenty tough an’ also I am  _damn good_ at maps. Don’t blame all'a you old fucks for bein’ real insecure.”

“Happens when you get old, bein’ around new blood. You can have that to look forward to,” Sniper said, flicking the dented cap of one of the beers at him across the table. Scout nabbed it before it could skitter off the table, grinning. “Right, then. Look here, you make a few more of these—ones for Soldier and Engineer and all them, proper ones like you’ve been tellin’ me, and we’ll go and see if we can’t sort this out. Damned if they’ll listen to either of us, but maybe we can get somebody’s ear. Alright?”

“Yeah, hey, yeah, man. Damn. Thanks.”


End file.
